Animal fats such as pork fat, chicken fat, lamb tallow, and beef tallow are widely used for making animal food products. The raw materials used to produce these fats usually contain animal offal or viscera. The fats derived from these materials (in particular, inedible fats) usually have strong, undesirable odors (such as odors of blood, feces, ammonia, and rot) which are offensive to humans.
It would be desirable to reduce or mask the offensive odors of animal fats, and in particular, inedible animal fats, to improve their aromatic characteristics for pet owners, and to enhance their palatability for the animal consumers.
In designing foods for animals, particularly companion animals such as cats and dogs, optimal animal health or wellness through good nutrition is an important goal. However, even the most nutritious animal food is of little value if the animal rejects or refuses to eat the food, or if the animal's intake of the food is restricted because the animal finds the food unpalatable.
Enticing a companion or other animal to eat can be an expensive and time consuming chore. Foods with varying moisture content, supplements, and treats have been developed to encourage animals to eat. However, these solutions to the problem are not always effective.
Numerous potential palatability enhancers are available for animals. In order to be effective, palatability enhancers require certain properties. Firstly, a potential palatability enhancer should be compatible with the food composition during processing and packaging and it should possess a practical extended shelf-life. Secondly, the palatability enhancer should be appealing to the animal's sense of taste and smell, whilst being physically attractive. Thirdly, a palatability enhancer should be compatible with the animal after ingestion such that it does not cause any significant problems to the animal, particularly gastrointestinal problems.
Some palatability enhancers are commercially available as flavoring agents. Others are continually being synthesized anew, extracted from natural products, or digested from various animal organs. The success of these materials in compositions for animal consumption is often unpredictable. Therefore, there is a need for new palatability enhancers that increase the palatability of compositions for consumption by an animal.